Crisis Is Where We Live: environmental Justice for the Anthropocene

This article considers the material imaginations of environmental crisis and justice in the context of the Anthropocene. I argue that political action at the intersections between environmental degradation and environmental change produce 'anticipatory histories' (DeSilvey, 2012) of planetary crisis. 'Anticipatory histories' disorder linear and depoliticised understandings of external crisis and they support different social imaginaries of the relationship between everyday life and geophysical events. Drawing its inspiration from recent environmental justice projects in the United States (New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and high-level nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain in Nevada), this article explores what environmental justice can teach us about living with environmental crisis and change.